and i think about two weeks ago in india i sat down with hillary clinton. that's when she was talking about the north koreans as unruly children and saying things like that. she also issued an apology to the north koreans. she may not call it an apology, but she basically said "we're very sorry this happened." so i think there were a lot of demands coming from the north koreans. i mean, this is a very serious thing here holding these two journalists. everybody is very happy they were released. but there was a lot of back channel going on and i know evan knows a lot more about that than i do. >> rose: i'm going to get to that. but what is the take on what we gained from clinton's conversation with kim jong il? >> well, they met for about an hour and a half and they had that v.i.p. state dinner. so they certainly didn't talk about just the release of these journalists. i mean, that was pretty much a done deal before he went over there. they wouldn't have gone over there if he didn't believe he was coming back with those journalists. i think president clinton